Category: alf

So this week marks two full years that I’ve spent writing about ALF. I’d reflect on that fact but then I’d have to commit suicide so fuck it. What I will say though is thanks for wasting two years of your life right along with me!

Also, in case you haven’t noticed, the Arts in Entertainment Kickstarter went live yesterday. Click that link to check it out, and please pledge if you’re interested in seeing any of these books come to life. If you feel inclined to do so, you can show your appreciation for this series and this site by kicking a few dollars into the campaign. It’s nowhere near obligatory, but I’d appreciate it greatly, and you’d be showing your support in an extremely productive way. So thank you in advance!

Anyway, ALF. And I’ll be damned. I didn’t expect to enjoy an episode so soon into season four. What’s more, I didn’t expect to enjoy an episode without qualification so soon into season four.

“Lies” is a hell of a lot of fun, and while it might not have been a highlight of better shows — God knows there were better shows — it’s one of those ALF episodes that suggests so frustratingly an alternate universe in which the writers gave a shit. When they put forth the effort, we end up with something good. Sometimes we even end up with something great.

This episode…isn’t great. But that’s okay. It doesn’t try to dazzle or impress; it takes a simple story, tells it well, and explores it for comedy along the way. Is that too much to ask? Is that really such a difficult thing to do on a regular basis?

For this show, yeah, it definitely is. But look on the bright side: that comparatively shitty hit-rate makes “Lies” and episodes like it stand out all the more.

We open pretty damned strongly, and the quality keeps up right through to the end credits. I am definitely not complaining this week.

It begins with Willie calling for Brian. He says that the game is starting soon, and I thought the idea was that they were going to watch some sporting event on television. But no! He’s taking Brian to Little League.

So, there’s a surprise already. That little detail that was sketched in last week? Surprising millions, it actually carried forward. We’re getting dangerously close to giving Brian a characteristic, ALF. Be careful!

Maybe ALF is interested in introducing a little continuity after all. (Another detail — which we’ll get to shortly — suggests this even more strongly.) Why they waited four seasons to do it is beyond me, but it’s a great impulse. I’m particularly happy that this particular hobby went to Brian, because he is by far the character who most needs some kind of development.

Might the writers have recognized that and taken conscious steps to address it? It’s possible. If they didn’t know at this point that the Tanners would be gone in the hypothetical fifth season, fixing holes in their characters would make sense. And if they did know, humanizing Brian this late in the game was still a good move. After all, shouldn’t he and ALF parting ways register with us in some way? It’ll never be E.T. leaving Elliott, but with a little work it’ll mean more than a ball of yard rolling away from a sheet of cardboard.

Also, last week I wasn’t sure if Brian’s sport was Little League or Tee Ball, but the mention of a pitcher here means it’s the former. We hear about the pitcher because Kate wonders aloud why they call him The Head Hunter. She asks Willie, after a context-appropriate stammer, says, “It means Brian will probably get on base tonight.”

The delivery is incredible, considering Max Wright’s usual baseline of careless mumbling. Like…it’s actually good. It can’t play as well in print as it does on screen, so you’ll have to take my word for the fact that his demeanor, for once, is spot on. His impulse to spin this into some kind of defeated optimism is both funny and human; he’s behaving like a father who is worried, but doesn’t want to worry his family.

And you know what? It’s not the only great Max Wright delivery tonight. Oh, no. We are in for a treat.

Brian comes in saying he feels lucky, and Willie beams with momentary pride before shifting into, “Don’t forget to wear your batting helmet.”

ALF comes in, upset that a funny scene was happening without him. He bitches about some misinformation he discovered in The National Inquisitor. And, yes, I looked it up to be sure: that’s the same tabloid magazine from “Alone Again, Naturally.” See? More continuity! I’m…gobsmacked. Like, really. It’s almost like somebody who writes this show also finally started watching it.

Kate reveals that she tries to throw that magazine out before ALF gets it…which is an understandable response to the wild goose chase it triggered in its previous appearance. Of course, that episode also claimed that Kate bought it at the supermarket for him — the family didn’t subscribe — but, as ever, tiny details like that don’t bother me when I’m enjoying the episode.

ALF gives it back to her, but he says he can’t give her back the melon rinds he dug out of the garbage with it. “That ship has sailed.” And, for the first time ever, I enjoyed a joke about ALF shitting everywhere.

“Lies,” I’m yours to lose.

After the credits Lynn comes in with the mail. Brian asks if there’s anything for him, and she laughs. Which is a bit bitchier than we usually get from Lynn, but by now the show must be aware that Brian’s a total non-entity. Like, there’s no way they aren’t aware of that.

I’m willing (and eager!) to see this as a shot at his worthlessness as a character. Of course you didn’t get any mail, kid. You were miscarried and nobody’s had the heart to tell you.

I do have to say that there’s an odd, crumbly, buzzing noise in this episode. Like the low visual quality last week, something seems to be wrong with the audio here. And, like last week, I can’t blame the episode, but it’s kind of a shame. It’s a really annoying sound, and it never lets up. More annoying is the fact that “Lies” is actually pretty good, and I really wish I could enjoy it without a hornet farting in my ear.

Anyway, ALF gets something from The National Inquisitor. Evidently he wrote them an angry letter about the inaccuracies in their article about Amazon women on Alpha Centauri. He says that that’s bullshit; they live on Xerxes IV. He pronounces it “Zirk-sis, which I’m pretty sure is wrong, but he pronounces it differently later on so maybe Paul Fusco just tripped over the line.

The National Inquisitor offers ALF $250 to turn his corrections into a full article, and that is the right way to do what happened in “A Little Bit of Soap.”

See, way back in that episode, ALF just suddenly began writing for a national soap opera. Like, out of literally nowhere, with no justification for any of it. He just said, “I write soaps now,” and because this is his show and the laws of the universe revolve around him, it was so. You’re lucky he doesn’t decide to sleep with your wife, because there will be no stopping it.

Here, the situation operates with something we can recognize as sense. The Inquisitor is not a respected publication; it prints made-up crap, and makes no secret of it. So some guy writes to them with more made-up crap, and I fully believe they’d offer to buy it. They probably thought it was amusing, but at the very least they looked at ALF’s truthful letter and thought they were seeing the scribblings of a kook that will help them sell magazines. Buying his article makes complete sense, especially since he pretty much mailed them a pitch.

It’s also nice that they’re not hiring him on as Editor in Chief or something, what with One World to Hope For seemingly bringing him on immediately as a never-seen showrunner that only communicated with them through the US Mail.

This is much, much better, folks.

In the next scene Lynn is on the phone talking to Joanie, whoever she is. (This fame thing…I don’t get it.) She’s doing that thing all teenage girl characters do when they’re on the phone: lying in bed with her feet up behind her and twiddling her toes.

I don’t know how this became the standard, but, yeah, just about any imagery in any medium of a teenage girl on the phone will look like this. Actually, maybe things have changed now with cell phones; characters no longer have to be in one specific spot (a couch, a bed) to make a phone call, so maybe this isn’t as common anymore. I can’t say for sure, though. I’ve yet to watch anything produced after 1991.

There’s a funny enough line here. Evidently Joanie broke up with her boyfriend, and Lynn advises, “You’ll feel better once the bitterness sets in.” I like that! (And bitterness!)

ALF knocks on the door and wants her to read his article again. Evidently he’s been showing her revised versions all night. And…man. This whole bit is exaggerated, but it hits home.

As a writer who was once a younger, even worse writer, I understand this impulse fully, deeply, and painfully.

ALF has been sitting at a table writing and rewriting endlessly. He’s worrying word choices to death. He’s driving himself nuts over 500 words for some disreputable magazine nobody cares about anyway. And then keeps bringing every change to Lynn (which I love and is completely true to everything I’d like to believe about their relationship) to read it over.

What must have started as her humoring him has by now become a chore, because she exhales loudly and tries to shoo him away. He’s worn out his welcome…but he wants his writing to be just perfect so he has no choice but to keep bothering her. I like it. I recognize entirely where both characters are coming from. It’s…well done, actually.

She tries to get out of it by telling him that she needs to do her homework and she doesn’t have time. “Then I’ll stare at you until you do,” he says. They both call each other’s bluff, and a nice little scene gets even better.

Lynn does her homework and ALF stares, each of them making good on their threat but also not getting anything out of it. It’s funny, and it’s an all-too-rare kind of moment in which Paul Fusco isn’t sidelining the characters while he performs some interminable Jay Leno monologue. Instead he’s just letting the situation be funny.

What a welcome change.

Finally Lynn gives in. She looks over it briefly and says something’s good, which throws ALF into a panic, because in the last four drafts she called that thing great.

She tells him that “it’s only eight paragraphs in a sleazy magazine.” And, yeah.

Yeah.

Just…god. Yeah.

I know exactly how you labor over the tiniest damn things, even when you know nobody will read it anyway. I don’t even know why; it’s just the way your mind works when you care about something you’re doing. It doesn’t matter that it’s only The National Inquisitor; you’re going to stay up all night for as many nights as it takes to get it just right…and you’ll never, ever, in your entire life get it to the point that you feel it’s just perfect.

It’s an endless spiral of second guesses and revisions, and eventually you just run out of time and have to send it in anyway. For a specific example, my last Fiction into Film had 96 drafts.

Nintey-fucking-six.

And if I’d had another week or two to work on it, it would have had more. Why? Because I’m a writer. And writers are fucking insane.

She finally just tells him it’s perfect. “I’d send it in just like it is!” she exclaims.

ALF, defeated, replies, “You hate it, don’t you?”

Someone on this writing staff must have been a serious author. It sure doesn’t show in most episodes, but nobody else would know how to write a scene like this. Nobody.

Then we get one hell of an unexpected, but welcome, scene. Willie and Kate are sitting with Brian on the couch, gently chastising the kid for getting a D on his history test.

So…Brian has a presence in this episode. Even moreso than he had in episodes that were ostensibly about him. Have the writers been reading these reviews, or something?

Also nice and unexpected: both Willie and Kate are acting like parents.

They’re clearly disappointed, but they’re being gentle about it. There’s the right note of soft discipline struck here. Even better, an earlier joke pays off here again: when going through the mail, Brian was studying. He asked ALF who started World War II, and ALF replied that it must have been Colonel Klink. I didn’t mention it there, because there were better things to talk about than a normal ALF joke in which he mentions a thing we recognize and that’s apparently enough.

But now we see that it wasn’t just a normal ALF joke; it was a quick laugh that built toward something that would happen later. Brian put Colonel Klink on his test, and here we are. By this show’s standards, getting both a setup and payoff is impressive.

Willie tells Brian that from now on he has to study alone — a punishment and a constructive response to the problem — and walks over to ALF to lecture him about the difference between television shows and reality. Another constructive response, even if we know this is fucking ALF and not understanding the difference between anything and anything else is kind of his thing.

Lynn comes in with a stack of National Inquisitors, and Willie and Kate don’t understand her excitement. Lynn says, “You mean you still haven’t told them, ALF?”

Willie takes a breath and says, “Oh, I hate hearing those words.”

Lynn rushes to assure him that it’s nothing to worry about. She explains that the magazine asked ALF to write an article about Amazon women in space.

Willie replies, “The blood is draining from my head.”

This is easily the best episode Max Wright has had in ages. What happened? Maybe he was just excited that his tenure on this show was almost over. Maybe it’s because he gets a lot of scenes without ALF later on — and a lot of jokes as well — and figured he’d put in some effort in the hopes that he’d get more scenes like that moving forward. Maybe they shot this during Lent the year he gave up crack.

I have no idea, but whatever the reason, he’s funny. The weary frustration absolutely comes through, and human hank of dried up Silly Putty that he is, I give him credit for exercising restraint, doing all of his acting in the eyes and face.

Kate then does something so few people on this show ever do: she remembers the premise of ALF.

She reminds our naked alien chum that they are trying very hard to protect him from the outside world, and writing articles for magazines kind of jeopardizes that. For those keeping score, that’s 2 out of 2 episodes this season that remind us of the danger ALF is in should he ever leave the house…and we know the season ends with him leaving the house and facing that danger.

Coincidence or actual foreshadowing?

I’m still betting the former, but the latter is getting admittedly more likely. I’ll be curious to see how the rest of the season pans out. Or I would be, if I didn’t already know it involves Jim J. Bullock.

Anyway, ALF reads the article and gets upset; the Inquisitor changed his story and added a bunch of sensationalist nonsense of their own. Funny how a major soap opera never thought to rewrite his shit and just slapped it on the air, word for word, even though it had nothing to do with the roster of characters or plotlines they’d built up over the past however many seasons, but FUCK I HATE THAT EPISODE CAN YOU TELL

ALF fumes for a bit and considers taking some kind of revenge on them, but Willie tells him to eat shit. He got his dumbass article about Amazon space women in a magazine, and he’s not allowed to tempt fate like this anymore.

“Okay,” ALF says, “but you’d better hope those big-boned babes don’t come after you. They’d snap you in half at the pelvis!”

…um, did ALF just inspire a Futurama plot?

Later that day ALF calls the Inquisitor and speaks to the editor about the problems with his article. And…yeah, this is another scene that I can definitely identify with. Granted, I’ve never had any substantial editorial changes to anything I’ve published — at least not without them being discussed first — but I can easily imagine why this bothers ALF so much.

In fact, my first published story was in a Canadian fiction magazine. Great. They added a U to my spelling of color and flavor and that was about it…

…except that my line spacing was changed. My precious line spacing!

See, in my mind, I used it to break up the story into smaller sections. Like chapters, basically. But the editor got rid of them! The whole thing was ruined! Readers would see this and think I was some kind of idiot!

Then I actually read it that way, and it read just fine. Sure, I preferred the section breaks — obviously I did; I put them there — but the story didn’t lose anything without them.

But the mere fact that I reacted that way — my writing career was over!! — gives me an idea of how I’d respond to a situation like this, in which I submitted a piece of writing that I worked so carefully to construct…only to see that some bozo in the office reworked a bunch of crap and printed their own version.

I don’t know who got the the idea to turn ALF into a shlubby little naked author all of a sudden, but I’m pretty angry that they’re stealing my life story this way.

He nearly lets slip to the editor that he’s an alien, but stops just short of saying so. The editor can tell that something’s off, though, and she offers him $500 for an interview. He reluctantly accepts, and she says that someone will be right over to conduct it. Then she hangs up, and ALF realizes he’s fucked.

I know I give this show guff for its shitty act breaks, but that’s a good one. For the first time in a long time, I’m actually interested in seeing what happens next.

After the commercials, ALF ambles over to Willie, defeated, knowing he’s in deep shit. He says that he called The National Inquisitor, and they’re on their way over. Then the doorbell rings and he says, “They’ll fill you in on the rest.”

Max’s acting isn’t quite as good in this scene — maybe because he’s working only with his Most Hated Puppet and not the other actos — but it’s still funny, and I like that the episode is coming to a head this way. Okay, it does seem to imply that the Inquisitor has an office that’s a couple of blocks away from the Tanners at the most, but, again, details. The rest of the episode relies on Willie being caught off guard by someone demanding answers, and it works well, so I’m all for it. Especially since this whole thing was set into motion by ALF writing about space Amazons; if I can accept that those exist in this reality, I can accept that the Inquisitor people drive fuckin’ fast.

The whole “Willie caught off guard by someone demanding answers” bit should sound familiar, too. That’s what happened in “Weird Science,” when Consumer Ed and Marcia Wallace turned up…only they forgot to make it feel natural. Or funny. Or logical in any way at all. (Again, why was Consumer Ed filming Willie talk to his son’s principal about a science fair?)

Way back then, longtime commenter Jeff said, “the zany intersection of Consumer Ed’s visit and Marcia Wallace’s visit has the potential to be a very good fount of comedy. Of course, it would have to be intelligently set up and executed, and here it sure wasn’t…but still, someone had the idea.”

Fortunately, someone had almost the same idea again…and made it funny this time around.

“Weird Science” and “A Little Bit of Soap” both have their biggest problems reprised and corrected here. “Lies,” you are really spoiling us.

At the door the editor tries to get Willie to share his story with the paper — thinking he’s ALF — but he tells her he’s not interested. Undeterred she probes (no pun intended…) and her photographer snaps Willie’s picture over and over again until he threatens to call the police.

They leave, which is fine, but the episode’s not over so ALF comes out and tells Willie he needs to call the reporters back. See, ALF was peeping through the plot window, and is worried the guy might have taken his picture without realizing it.

And this is a good way to keep the plot rolling. ALF always peeps through the plot window, and nobody catches him. Like, ever. Even when he’s throwing biscuits at people or making noise or whatever the fuck. For once there might be some outside chance of someone in this universe of braindead cretins catching a glimpse…and that’s interesting. Sure, the photographer has no idea of what he captured on film — if he did capture anything — but now, rarity of rarities, something is actually at stake in this show, and something needs to be taken care of immediately.

It’s a development (okay, pun intended…) that can play out any number of ways, but no matter how it plays out it forces our heroes to take action. This is still good! The fact that our interlopers have no idea of any of this is even better.

Willie runs out and flags them down as they’re leaving. The interviewer comes in, excited to interview Willie about his experience with aliens.

She turns on the tape recorder and asks, “How did the so-called aliens first make contact with you?”

Willie replies, “Whoa. I didn’t see that one coming. You are good.”

And that’s actually a great little exchange. I like this!

Willie didn’t have time to come up with a story — and indeed doesn’t even fully comprehend what was happening. He had to run immediately after the crew, but now that they’re here…he has no idea what to say. And it works.

I wonder if Max Wright just ups his game when he realizes he has material that deserves it. Yeah, I realize I give this guy a lot of shit, but by now it should be clear that the biggest problems with this show come from the writing. I think Wright does, by and large, a fucking terrible job on this show, but it’s not as though the material deserves much more. Again, I can’t really blame the guy for half-assing what’s already been half-assed.

As “Night Train” and “Funeral for a Friend” demonstrated, he’s willing to rise to the quality of the script. When it’s worth his time, he puts in the effort. I wish he thought it was worth his time more often, but, really, how invested can you get in shit like “Movin’ Out” or “Some Enchanted Evening”?

The photographer comes back in, but he’s reloading his camera; the other roll is full, he says…which means that the photographic evidence of ALF is still in the van. In the kitchen ALF, Lynn, and Brian decide to find and expose it, while Willie continues to stall for time in the living room. So that’s pretty much what will carry us through the rest of the episode, and both of the things that are happening have the potential to be both interesting and funny. I’m impressed.

Fencing Willie into coming up with lies works pretty well. In fact, it was one of the few ways he got to be funny way back in season one. I remember a scene in “Come Fly With Me” in which Brian and ALF were hiding in the bathroom. Mr. Ochmonek heard the razor going, and Willie grabbed for an explanation: “I won’t allow him to have a mustache.”

Max Wright was probably a pretty awkward guy in real life, so when he’s asked to be awkward on camera, he pulls it off just fine. It’s funny and it comes naturally to him, but the show, oddly, almost never tapped into it. It’s nice to see that happening again, because like Lynn’s friendship in season two it’s some character development that was just handed to them…and they shrugged and let it drop. I’m glad they decided to pick it up again, even if it’s just for one episode.

Also the photographer is named Phil, and I admit I’m more than a little relieved that when I finally share my name with an ALF character, he’s in an episode I don’t absolutely hate. I have enough self-loathing as it is.

Brian and ALF head out to the van while Lynn fills Willie in on what’s happening. Willie expresses concern about Brian (three times in one episode!) but Lynn convinces him they have no other choice. And I like that. Willie’s worried…but it’s also their only way out of the situation, short of binding ALF’s hands and feet and handing him to the magazine to do with as they please. Don’t get me wrong, I wish they’d do that, but we still have most of the season left to go so we’re stuck with him for the time being.

Normally Kate would be able to either search the van or distract the reporters, but she’s…somewhere else. It’s a bit of a cheat (where is she?) but, once again, the episode is funny, so it’s not worth picking nits.

Willie reveals to Lynn that he’s just plying the reporters with what little details he can remember from episodes of Star Trek. I doubt any (or many) of them are actually from Star Trek, but I definitely believe Willie spend his college days watching Star Trek alone on the floor of his dorm more than I believe he’s ever watched a football game in his life.

We cut to the van where ALF is snooping around. He finds a naked picture of Roseanne Barr and makes the face in the screencap above because she’s not conventionally attractive. Get ‘er, ALF!!

This is the second joke in as many episode about Roseanne’s appearance. I wonder why. Does ALF feel threatened that her show’s legacy will eclipse his? Ha! What are the odds of that?

Back in the living room Willie is making up some bullshit about finding himself floating in a fog…which was unlike any fog he’d ever floated in before.

The photographer says, “Wow.” Willie says, “Darn right wow.” Then he looks toward the camera with something like smug pride, and it’s beautiful.

This whole episode is turning out to be a lot of fun. I’m reminded of “Can I Get a Witness?” back in season two. I liked a lot of that one, but ended up being fairly dismissive of it. At the time, commenter Mark Moore asked me why, since it seemed like a decent, fun episode.

Well, the more I think about it, the more I realize I was pretty harsh. There’s nothing wrong with an episode that’s good. It might not be great…but so what? I was probably harder on “Can I Get a Witness?” than I should have been; that’s more clear to me now that I’ve sat through so many truly fucking terrible episodes. Sometimes it’s okay to just have a filler episode that has some fun along the way. At least it’s not fucking “Baby, Come Back.”

Speaking of “Baby, Come Back,” where the fuck is Eric? No, I’m not going to complain about the baby being suddenly absent from the family. If anything it’s a reason to like “Lies” more. I just wonder why he doesn’t seem to exist this week.

Actually, that does get addressed right now when Kate comes home. Willie rises immediately to hug her. I love that this guy only touches his wife when he’s putting on a show for strange visitors. He stops short of an actual hug, though, which I’m convinced is down to the actors’ complete and total aversion to anything resembling chemistry.

He explains that they’re from the Inquisitor, here to talk about ALF’s story. This causes her to panic briefly, but he says, “It’s okay, honey. They know.”

She replies, “They know about…?”

And he finishes, “About my travels to other solar systems, yes!”

Not revelatory stuff, and Kate assuming that Willie told some strangers about ALF is pretty dumb, but the timing on the exchange is good, and it’s funny.

The whole sequence has been pretty good, I admit, but my favorite part comes when Kate excuses herself to go check on the baby. It’s true that you should check on your newborn at least once a day, so no complaints there. But is this actually how they deal with having a baby in the cast, now? Every so often someone just alludes to it being in another room? Come on.

Anyway, as she’s leaving to check on her imaginary baby, the reporter asks Willie what it was like to be the main course at an Amazon love feast.

“Or I could sit in,” Kate says, staying right where she is. That got an actual laugh out of me, and, besides, Eric’s been dead for hours. What’s another minute or two to listen to your stammering, impotent husband spin cosmic erotic yarns?

Willie begins, “It was very hot…” in a disinterested, monotone flounder.

I kind of love it.

In the van ALF is eating all of the film for some reason.

It’s weird because they said the plan was to expose all of the film, so I’m not sure why he’s chowing down on it instead. Yeah, you could say it’s quicker, and that would be true if he were swallowing film canisters whole, but he’s exposing the film first and then eating it, so who the fuck knows.

He burps because of course he does.

Back in the house Lynn gives Willie the signal that the film is destroyed. Immediately Willie stands up, and lectures the magazine on printing dumbass nonsense like this, and rewarding people with money for making it up.

It’s…actually not half bad. Of all the real-world lectures we’ve gotten in this show (“Weird Science,” “Take a Look at Me Now,” “Fight Back”) this is definitely the best. It’s a fair point, concisely made, but the best thing about it is that it builds to a punchline; after Willie kicks them out of the house, the family panics that ALF is still in the van.

…so he has to chase them down again after telling them off. It’s really not bad at all!

Then ALF waddles over, wondering what the fuck Willie is doing running down the street.

Brilliant? No. A fair ending to a good episode? Absolutely.

Well done, ALF. You stuck the landing. And I can’t even say that about many of the episodes that I like.

In the short scene before the credits, ALF re-enacts the “calling Orson” sequences from Mork & Mindy.

In that show, Mork would report back about whatever lesson he learned this week on Earth. Here, ALF reports on freedom of the press…but don’t worry, it’s brief, and the big joke is that the Orson analog (whom ALF calls “The Fat Man”) asks if ALF is wearing a new outfit. “Yeah,” ALF says. “I had to change it for legal reasons.”

I like it…and it’s one of those strangely rare instances of the show having fun with familiar “alien” touchpoints. Usually it’s just ALF masturbating on the couch to Little House on the Prairie. Having him actually do something that’s recognizably alien — riffing on a formula familiar to viewers — is not only welcome, but it makes you realize how rarely the show does it at all. I remember the pilot making a few references to E.T. for instance, but since then he might as well have been a gremlin, or a teddy bear that’s come to life. So little of this show about an alien — which indirectly has “alien” in the title — has anything to do with fucking aliens that every time it does do something alien I fall out of my chair.

The vignette really just exists as a sight gag with a bit of dialogue thrown in, but it works fine. It resolves itself with ALF waking up in bed, promising himself he’d never eat film before falling asleep again.

I’d love to see that as a reference to the final episode of Newhart, in which the entire series is revealed to be the dream of Bob’s character from The Bob Newhart Show…who was then chastised by his wife for eating Japanese food before bed. It’s one of television’s most famous endings, and with ALF‘s frequent references to the works of Bob Newhart, I thought for sure this was a loving little nod.

But, nope. Despite the seeming similarity of the line (and, to some extent, the context), “Lies” aired about a year before Newhart‘s famous fakeout. So it’s just coincidental, but considering the many, deliberate Newhart connections, it’s an interesting one.

So, yeah. A nice, solid, baseline episode. Nothing I’ll look back on and say I loved, but it had a nice idea and it took the time to tell it entertainingly. Good acting all around, some insightful jabs about the writing process, and a storyline that didn’t revolve around cheats and idiocy.

That’s a good episode of ALF. Here’s hoping it wasn’t the last one.

Countdown to Jim J. Bullock existing: 5 episodes
Countdown to ALF being eviscerated in front of the Tanners: 22 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: Melmac and Xerxes IV were both in “the tri-planet area.”

We are back! And badder than ever! Seriously, I’m not just saying that! My reviews are going to be utter shit!

Season four. You know, when I started this series way back in 1966 or whenever it was, I never thought I’d make it this far. It just seemed so…distant. I remember adding all of the episode titles to the ALF archive page and feeling daunted. I mean, how in the world would I ever finish reviewing all this crap?

Well, the answer is you guys. You readers. You’re the reason I’m still doing this, and the reason that it’s getting more likely by the week that I might actually finish it. So before we dive into the final stretch of episodes, let me just say thank you. You guys are great. I wouldn’t change anything about you, except that you’d have bigger boobs and you’d let me honk them.

Anyway, “Baby, Come Back.” It’s the first post-birth episode, and it’s about Baby Eric. Am I correct in assuming it’s also the last episode about Baby Eric? Glancing at the episode titles to come, none of them have “baby” in the title, and I doubt ALF suddenly grows a sense of subtlety for its final season, so I’m pretty confident that’s the case. Unless “Hungry Like the Wolf” is about ALF devouring the kid during a full moon. I guess that’s something I can hope for.

The season opens with Willie failing to be a dad. Big shock. His baby is screaming bloody murder while he stares at it and asks it politely to stop. I’m pretty sure he’s about four seconds away from putting on headphones and sitting in the other room with this month’s copy of Manholes.

There’s something weird about this episode, though; the video quality is really awful and washed out. I don’t know if you can tell from the screenshots, but it’s very noticeable when it’s in motion. It’s like back when I had to watch these things on Hulu, and my connection would be crappy so it would load a lower quality version of the show.

But it’s a DVD. This looks like they sourced it from a VHS, and maybe that’s what happened. Sometimes masters simply don’t survive. It’s an odd thing to think about nowadays, but it happens. It’s why episodes of Doctor Who don’t exist anymore; prior to digital storage, shelf space was a serious consideration. And while you lose a lot of cultural, artistic, and historical value every time you wipe a master — any master — the fact was that there was only so much room to go around.

So maybe “Baby, Come Back” simply doesn’t exist in a better version. So be it. It’s a shame, but there’s nothing we can do at this point but watch Willie try to stop his son from crying and…

fuck it I take back what I said wipe every ALF master I don’t give a shit

ALF comes in and tells Willie to control his fucking kid.

Willie tells ALF to fuck off, and he makes some stammering excuse about babies needing to exercise their lungs. So, yeah, Willie is the kind of guy who has to be right even when a kid is crying and wailing holy terror. Every good social worker knows that crying people just want attention and should be ignored.

Sick to shit of this new baby already, ALF shouts “Quiet!” and, terrified, it shuts up.

Season four is go!

After the credits Kate is interviewing a potential babysitter. She’s just some teenage girl, but I have to give her props for having the most psychotic smile I’ve seen SINCE MY LAST BLIND DATE LOL

No, honestly, it’s pretty funny. She does this right after Eric starts crying in the background, and she says with perfect sincerity to Kate, “I can’t stand it when they cry. Can you make it stop?”

There’s something about her awkwardness that I wasn’t sure was intentional, but I like it anyway. Compare this to Max Wright’s “trying too hard to be silly” face and it looks downright Shakespearean.

Sure enough I looked her up and this is…Missy Francis?!

Jesus. Nowadays she’s known for hosting Money with Melissa Francis on right-wing circle jerk Fox News. I looked up a clip to be sure and that was definitely her, same face, ranting about why she’s proud to work for Fox News and not any of those other shitty networks that waste everyone’s time checking their facts, so fucking hell. Can’t wait for the episode in which Bill O’Reilly plays a lifeguard who doesn’t understand tides.

It turns out she was also on Mork & Mindy in a small role and Little House on the Prairie in a much larger one. I guess she had a decent enough start as an actor, but either didn’t stick with it or realized you make a lot more money vomiting unsourced nonsense behind a desk all day.

Even so, it’s a shame we’ll never see her again, because I’d much rather season four introduce a psychotic babysitter to the Tanner house than Jim J. Bullock.

In fact, insane Fox News commentator-in-training or not, she has a great moment shortly. Evidently her babysitting resume is filled with acting credentials (which Kate makes fun of, but, damn, if she’s got more than one credit that’s a more impressive resume than the cast of ALF). When she leaves Kate says, “I hope you get that part on Munters Today!” The babysitter stops in the doorway, turns around, and makes a big, excited show out of crossing her fingers.

It’s…incredibly human, and actually very funny. No wonder you didn’t stick around, Missy Francis. You did something funny and your last name wasn’t Fusco. Rookie mistake.

Looking up The Munsters Today I see that it ran for three seasons. That’s…way more than I expected. I vaguely remember it existing, and I kind of thought it was some miserable failure that was canceled during season one. I guess not. In fact, it ran almost as long as ALF did. In Hell I believe they’re both still running.

ALF comes in and says WHAT’S FOR DINNER which is his entire character in three words.

Kate and Willie talk for a while about how Kate can’t go back to work until they find a babysitter, which is reassuring and frustrating in equal measure. Reassuring because we know Kate is still a Realtor. That’s nice; I had half expected them to forget that between seasons, like old what’s-his-name who used to live with the Ochmoneks and cum into Lynn’s socks when nobody was looking. Captain Pesto or something.

But it’s also frustrating because…come on. An alien lives in your fucking house. A babysitter will be on your payroll for approximately 12 minutes before one of the following occurs:

a) ALF accidentally kills her
b) ALF violently rapes her
c) ALF violently rapes and then kills her
d) ALF kills and then violently rapes her
e) she discovers ALF and rats the family out to the government

Admittedly, e) is the least likely outcome, but the point is Baby Eric either needs to go live with a relative, or you need to keep a family member home with him. Strange babysitters won’t do. It’s emphatically not an option.

Willie asks Kate if she’s tried advertising in the college newspapers, and that reminds me…why not ask one of Lynn’s friends?

HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHHA I KILL ME

They do have a pretty interesting sub-conversation here about the possibility of ALF one day being able to start a life without them, which is an important thing to discuss so obviously they drop the subject immediately. But I wonder if this is meant to be a kind of foreshadowing. According to commenter Justin who provided this awesome piece a while back, “The whole thing got so heated that it was agreed between the producers that should the series get a fifth season order the Tanners would be completely written out of the show. ALF would be taken to the Alien Task Force headquarters and the show was to become a McHale’s Navy– or Hogan’s Heroes-type comedy, set on a military base.”

Depending on when that decision actually happened, it’s possible that the cast and crew knew here that ALF would indeed have a Tanner-less life in season five, and they laid some groundwork for that.

It’s unlikely, since this is never a show that’s cared anything about inter-episode continuity and, again, probably wouldn’t start caring about it in season four, but it’s interesting that the first episode of the season floats that idea and the final episode tries to fulfill it.

But we’ll get to that hot mess soon enough.

Later on, Kate is trying to burp Eric. No wonder we don’t get any Eric episodes in the future…they explored every possibility with this one! Also, the baby has wispy brown hair in this episode whereas he had thick black hair in the last, so I’m pretty sure the Tanners already traded their kid for one they liked better.

ALF says he’ll show her a trick, and Kate has a decent moment when she says that the last time he showed her a trick, it took two weeks for her eyebrows to grow back. That’s…yeah, decent. I’ll stick with decent.

But then ALF promises that Eric won’t leave his hands. Kate replies, “Spot him, Lynn.”

And fucked if that isn’t my favorite line in ages.

Then we immediately get my least favorite line in ages. Kate asks ALF to heat Eric’s formula, and ALF says, “What do you need formula for, Kate? Tapped out?”

…fucking gross, ALF.

Like…gah.

I’m not one of those people that’s disgusted by breast feeding or anything. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s a normal bodily function. But ALF joking about Eric sucking Kate’s tits dry is disgusting, even by this show’s revolting standards.

Kate’s boss calls and says she has to sell a house right now, and he doesn’t give a fuck if she just had a baby and is on maternity leave. So rather than let this massive lawsuit fall into her lap, Kate panics about who can watch the baby that just sucked her boobs to shriveled, flappy husks.

She suggests Mrs. Ochmonek, but ALF says that’s the wrong answer without elaborating. I have no idea why; the Ochmoneks are the only other human beings on the planet, so I thought she was a pretty good guess.

Seriously, why not Mrs. Ochmonek? What’s the in-universe explanation? Because ALF doesn’t like her? Who fucking cares? Someone needs to watch the kid, and they’re still putting the space monster’s unpredictable feelings ahead of the family’s needs. This is one weird-ass show. They didn’t write a reason Mrs. Ochmonek wouldn’t be the choice, so why bring it up? Just to make it absolutely clear to the folks watching at home that none of your characters act like human beings?

Then Kate makes up some names of neighbors we’ve never met. Nice try, writers, but we know full well nobody else lives in this version of LA.

One of the names is Mrs. Applebaum, who ALF says is occupied because she’s out becoming Mr. Applebaum. Kind of an uncomfortable joke in these more enlightened times, but it gets a lot worse.

Kate says that she forgot to send flowers, which is followed by audience laughter that’s massively misjudged. Why are people laughing about her sending flowers to a friend in a hospital? Clearly it’s because we’re supposed to find that operation ridiculous. Fuck you for embracing who you really are, “Mr.” Applebaum!

Anyway, ALF shits another layer onto the offensive sundae by telling Kate it’s too late for flowers. “Send aftershave instead.”

I wonder why ALF never caught on with the trans community.

What a bizarrely hateful show.

Anyway, now that ALF has spewed some toxic abuse at disenfranchised people who’ve never done any harm to him, Kate believes he is finally qualified to babysit her kid.

15 minutes later (that’s not my joke…that’s a caption indicating how quickly ALF abandoned the baby) our naked alien hero is watching Charles in Charge.

He makes a decently funny quip: “That Scott Baio is the next Tony Danza!” I don’t care if you hate it. Aside from Missy Francis’ crazy eyes it’s my favorite thing in the episode.

ALF hears Eric crying from across the house and bitches because he has to go take care of the kid, which is weird since he was angling to babysit it in the first place. Ugh, who fucking cares. Just accidentally kill the baby and be done with it, ALF.

Anyway, ALF goes to check on him and we find out that Eric shat everywhere. See? All possible baby plots are covered! No need to ever mention this kid again.

Then we cut to ALF’s gross alien hands pawing at the baby’s legs and thighs.

This is fucking horrible. And the baby is screaming the entire time. How can this not qualify as child abuse? The kid doesn’t know he’s in a TV show with a comedy puppet. He just knows he’s scared and crying for help because some giant monster won’t stop grabbing at his diaper, and none of the adults are coming to his aid.

What a horribly traumatic thing. This is the kind of thing babies probably have nightmares about, only this kid isn’t sleeping. He’s living through it, take after take, under the hot studio lights and nobody’s helping him. Jesus Christ.

Then ALF spreads the baby’s legs.

Yup.

That sure happens.

We see the baby’s bare ass while ALF dusts it with talcum powder. No, I’m not screenshotting that, but you know how embarrassed you are when your mom digs out those old baby pictures of you sitting naked in the sink? Now imagine that those baby pictures were actually videos. And that those videos were available worldwide on DVD. And that that DVD was ALF: The Complete Fourth Season.

It’s impossible to get much more embarrassing than that.

Then ALF also talcs up his own junk and I’m not screenshotting that, either.

So ALF pulls the diaper off the kid and puts on a new one. I guess we should be relieved that ALF’s graduated from trying to cram diapers up a doll’s anus to putting one on properly, but part of me is still kind of sickened by the fact that ALF is covered in fur and probably has all manner of germs all over him. It’s just…weird.

Like, if you lived with a bear, and you trained it to change your kid’s diaper, that would be impressive in several ways. But even if it could do it…would you want it to?

It’s an animal. Even if you could be 1,000% sure it would never hurt the kid (accidentally or deliberately), would you actually let the thing do it? It just seems like there’s far too much of a chance for the kid to get sick from that, or have a reaction to it. I don’t know. I have no kids and very rarely train animals to change them, so what do I know.

And don’t ask me why I’m starting hypotheticals with “If you lived with a bear…” Let’s just blame John Irving and move along.

Then ALF walks all around the house with Eric’s full diaper. Put it in the fucking diaper pail, ALF! This is gross.

Even worse is we can see that there is actual, visible shit on it. Look at the screenshot!

Fucking hell, props department. I know I often give you credit when you’re attentive to detail, but this is emphatically not the time to go above and beyond.

This is genuinely disgusting. No human being needs to see that in a sitcom. We can suspend disbelief when we see a TV character reacting with revulsion to a diaper that looks relatively clean. We can imagine what he’s actually seeing easy enough. We don’t need to see feces all over it.

Then Lynn and Brian come in and…Brian is dressed for Little League, or Tee Ball or something.

Well, looks like the kid got a life at some point. It was off camera, of course, but good for him. That explains (accidentally or deliberately) the mitt Kate yelled at him about in the last episode. I’m glad they gave the kid a hobby…and I kind of like the fact that he’s not good at it.

That’s not my interpretation…it’s a fact the show highlights. He complains that they never put him in the game, and when Lynn tosses him his mitt he fails to catch it. This isn’t great stuff, guys, but I appreciate the impulse. After three full seasons, this is the first time they’ve shown us that Brian either is or is not good at something. Usually he’s just there, looking miserable. It’s nice to know, at last, where he stands in relation to something other than scratching his armpit.

Then Lynn goes into the nursery to grab Eric, because Kate told her to. Brian gets pissed off and stomps on his mitt for a while. Uh, okay.

She tells Brian to tell ALF that Kate told her to take Eric. Man, talk about a clunky plot point. You can’t leave a note or tell ALF yourself?

Anyway, Benji Gregory only gets paid for one line a week, so he obviously can’t fulfill his part of the deal. They leave while ALF is away, presumably wrestling with a visibly shitty diaper.

When he goes back into the nursery he finds the baby missing and says, “So much for keeping my powder dry,” because he peed all over himself.

Now that’s an act break!

After the commercial Willie comes home, and ALF almost immediately rats himself out that Eric is missing. I kind of like this, because I thought the rest of the episode would just be ALF, running around in a panic thinking Eric is gone. Instead dumbass Willie gets roped into this crap, too, and that’s at least a smarter idea, if not necessarily funnier.

But this doesn’t mean they do much that they couldn’t have done with ALF alone. In fact, it all seems to be an excuse to get ALF to stand in the chimney, because the episode sure spends a lot of time showing us that.

There’s some not-bad acting from Max Wright (how many more times do you expect I’ll say that before the series ends?) as he realizes ALF didn’t misunderstand something; Eric really is gone. His panic is believable. It even manages to be (a certain degree of) subtle. It’s good, and, again, believable.

It gets less believable, though, when he starts running through the halls calling, “Eric! Eric! It’s dad!” It’s a fucking infant, Willie; it doesn’t know what you’re saying. You might as well be calling out to your missing car keys.

So, okay, I like some of this, but I don’t know why Willie isn’t stabbing ALF to death with a broken bottle at this point. Kill this fucking space beast! He’s spent three years ruining your life, your finances, your family, your future, your happiness, your dreams, your ambitions, and everything you’ve ever held dear. Now he lost your fucking baby and has no idea where it is. Kill this fucking space beast.

But, no. Can’t yell at ALF, for fuck’s sake, so instead Willie asks him to retrace his steps. Evidently ALF buried the shitty diaper in the back yard, so he and Willie conclude that maybe he buried Eric as well.

Yep, there you go, folks. One episode with the baby and already ALF is accidentally burying it alive.

They search the yard and can’t find it, though, which means either Eric was not buried alive, or they’re digging in the wrong place and later in the season somebody will trip over a very small skeleton.

Later Willie calls an operator and asks for 911, and there’s some joyless back and forth about the fact that he could have called 911 directly. It’d be hilarious if he weren’t calling about his dead baby.

It’s extraordinarily odd humor. Yes, we in the audience know Eric’s not dead or in danger. Fine. But Willie is convinced his son is dead or in danger, so why is he engaging in a sub-par “Who’s on First” with Lily Tomlin? What the hell is going on in his mind that he copes with the loss of a family member through half-assed comedy routines with disembodied voices?

Then ALF comes in, afraid that he’ll get in trouble, and Willie reaches down and comforts him, which brings the absurdity of this scene to toxic levels. In fact, it’s the single most bizarre fucking thing that’s ever happened on this show. This is where SPEWEY needs to be beaten to death with a rake, but Willie gives it a fucking shoulder rub.

You know how angry I get when ALF does something shitty and the family apologizes to him for it? Well, that’s what happening here. Except the shitty thing he did is murder their infant son.

Then Kate comes home and ALF does a spot-on impression of me watching this episode:

Willie tells Kate that he has something serious he needs to tell her. It’s not great acting but since Max Wright is dealing with the problem and not re-enacting the dead parrot sketch with a passing milkman it’s a big step up from a moment ago.

Hearing this — and knowing Eric is okay — Kate worries that something’s happened to her mother. ALF says, “We should be so lucky!” because if there’s one thing you should do after murdering someone’s youngest relative, it’s wish tragedy upon their oldest.

ALF is a fucking asshole, guys.

Speaking of Kate Sr., I noticed in an earlier shot that there was a photo of her on the mantel. (Doesn’t it piss you off when I talk about things and don’t provide photographic reference?) I don’t know how long that’s been there; it could well be new for this season. Granted, I don’t know why it would be new for this season, but it’s nice that somebody, at some point, realized that human beings sometimes display photos of fellow humans in their homes.

Also, Kate Sr. was MIA throughout last season, so I admit it’s kind of nice to see that she still exists within the universe of the show.

Whatever. The episode’s out of time so Lynn comes in with Eric. Willie runs to greet him and, man, can’t you just see the fatherly love in his eyes?

Kate eats up the last few precious minutes of the episode by repeating for us everything we already knew: Kate called Lynn and told her to pick up Eric and bring him to Brian’s game and Brian was supposed to tell ALF but he didn’t so ALF and Willie dug dead babies out of the yard instead. I guess it’s nice if you just managed to catch the end of the episode. That way you’re told on no uncertain terms that you didn’t miss anything worth watching.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well, which ALF proves by telling Kate that he mopped up the piss that he sprayed all over the baby’s room.

Kate apologizes to him and even asks for another chance, because fucking fuck this fuckass dipshit fuckshow fuck.

Watching this makes me feel like I’m drunk. What is actually going through any of these people’s minds? Why are they constantly apologizing to ALF?

Yeah, Lynn took the baby, but ALF was supposed to be watching it and instead left it alone while he engaged in diaper-burying shenanigans. Eric’s not dead, but ALF proved — proved! — that he left the kid long enough for something to happen to him. Why is Kate the one learning a lesson from this? And why is that lesson “I should be nicer to ALF”?

Jesus fuckbag.

In the short scene before the credits Eric is trapped in a confined space with the shit-covered monster who touched him inappropriately, made him cry, and pissed all over his bedding.

Countdown to Jim J. Bullock existing: 6 episodes
Countdown to ALF being flayed alive in front of the Tanners: 23 episodes

MELMAC FACTS: ALF claims that all Melmacians have an instinctive rapport with kids, and are able to suck milk through their noses. ALF had two younger siblings, a brother and a sister. Anyone know offhand if that’s consistent with the animated series? I’m proud to say that I don’t know, and I never will.

Lynn. Lovely, lost, unappreciated and underutilized Lynn.

When I started this series, I swept her to the side along with every other character on this show. She was nothing, after all. They were all nothing. And I wasn’t surprised by that in the least; while I watched ALF regularly as a kid, the only thing I remembered of the human characters was that the dad was a shitty actor. Revisiting it in my 30s did nothing to change that, and I didn’t expect it would; I’d watch an episode, write 50,000 words about everything that happened, and would still be unable to tell you who the fuck these people were.

So I was dismissive of Lynn. Can you blame me? I was convinced that the only character who was a character was Kate, and that’s largely because Anne Schedeen was in a position to channel the real-world frustrations felt by every member of the cast. She was convincing because she was supposed to be a bitch. While I largely enjoy and appreciate her work on this show, even I have to admit she got lucky. If she were supposed to play, say, a happy-go-lucky optimist type, she’d probably come off just as horribly as everybody else.

Time passed, and while I would be able to tell you more about the characters now than I was able to at the end of season one, my readings of them are informed — as was my reading of Kate’s — not by their words or their actions, but by the personalities of the actors shining through.

That’s why much of what I have to say about Willie overlaps with Max Wright’s general awkwardness and disinterest in anything that’s happening.

That’s why much of what I have to say about Brian overlaps with Benji Gregory’s smoldering hatred of the world around him.

And that’s why much of what I have to say about Lynn overlaps with Andrea Elson’s good-natured warmth and humanity.

No, I don’t know her. I don’t know anything about her. I’ve never read an interview with her, or seen her in anything else. (At least, not that I recall.) I could be dead wrong. She could be a major pain in the ass intent on bringing misery to every last person she meets. She could be a raging, selfish monster.

…but she isn’t.

I’m sure she isn’t.

And I’m sure she isn’t because ALF‘s writers aren’t that good; they don’t give the actors anything to work with aside from who they already are.

We don’t watch Kate, Brian, Lynn, and Willie…we watch Schedeen, Gregory, Elson, and Wright. The words on the page are interchangeable; they’re all setups for ALF’s punchlines anyway. Personalities fluctuate and backstories either don’t exist or are contradicted regularly. Nobody on the planet has a favorite Willie moment, even though he’s ostensibly the second most important character. And that’s because, in all seriousness, he’s nobody. He’s a presence for ALF to react to. They’re all presences for ALF to react to.

Which means that when warmth comes through — when Lynn says or does something sweet — it’s Elson’s. The writers sure as shit didn’t give her anything more (or anything unique) to work with. Characters have heart-to-hearts with ALF all the fucking time. If Lynn’s heart-to-hearts register more, or feel more genuine, it’s because they’re in line with who Andrea Elson really is.

And you know what? She seems pretty great.

Lynn’s growth on this show — I should really say Elson’s — has been the most unexpected pleasure of revisiting it. At first I was mainly happy that the puppetry was good. Then I was satisfied by the fact that I’d get a couple of decent episodes to look forward to each year. Then I got a shitload of boners over Mr. Ochmonek’s wardrobe.

All good things, to be sure, but nothing that really surprised me. Elson’s growth, however, was genuinely unexpected, and it’s gotten to the point that I both look forward to and dread her scenes. I look forward to them for obvious reasons — hers is a pleasant and welcome presence — but I end up dreading them because the writers have demonstrated time and again that they don’t know what to do with her…and often end up doing something pretty horrible.

I’m protective of Lynn by this point. It’s odd to say and maybe impossible to explain, but seeing the writers mishandle her feels something like a betrayal. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen, by now, several perfectly valid ways for the character to be handled, and it gets frustrating that the writing staff can’t tell them from the wrong ways. Or maybe, more likely, as this hellish, miserable production churns along and ruins the lives of everyone involved with it, I hope against hope for Elson to come out of it relatively unscathed.

The betrayal came to a head in “Promises, Promises,” which I’m sure you remember is the one time I failed to meet a deadline not because I was busy (or lazy…don’t forget lazy!), but because I couldn’t bear to sit down and write about it.

That’s never been a problem before. I like Kate, but she show’s treated her like garbage often enough and that’s never warranted more than some snarky comments in the review. I like the Ochmoneks, but aside from rhetorically asking you to TELL ME WHO THE BAD NEIGHBORS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE I can make it through their character abuse just fine.

Lynn’s different. Maybe it’s because she’s younger than most of her co-stars and there’s a natural inclination to want to keep the youth safe. Maybe it’s because she’s fairly attractive, and I HEAR SOME GUYS LIKE THAT. Maybe it’s because she comes across as a gentle, happy human being and we always need more of those in the world.

But maybe it’s just because this show is in dire need of actual characters…and Elson is positively handing one to them on a platter. The show ignores her, moves on, tries something different every week, and all the while she’s still there. Still being herself. Still waiting to be taken seriously.

We’re far enough into the show’s life that we can take a longer view of the characterization. In season one, for instance, she was just the daughter. She was a high school kid and a big sister. And that’s…kind of it. There was an episode about her wanting a car, and an episode about her dating, but that was as far as they ever got with exploring what her life was like.

Which is odd…ALF is a show about an alien who is experiencing Earth culture (well, American culture) for the first time. Which means that the basic makeup of the family (nerdy professional male, frustrated neat-freak housewife, gregarious high school girl, brain damaged son) was conducive to ALF having second-hand experience of many, many different facets of that culture.

Willie might introduce ALF to Bach while Kate introduces him to The Rolling Stones and Lynn introduces him to Cyndi Lauper. (Brian, in a hilarious subplot, is fatally electrocuted while plugging in the radio.) The point is that having a high school girl in the cast should expose ALF — and us — to things that high school girls like, need, and want. But the writers don’t care to figure out what any of those things are.

So she wants a car. And she wants a boyfriend. Which is about as deep as their understanding goes, and they’re, sadly, fine with that.

Oh, but there is one more thing high school girls want: they want to fuck their brains out.

Good thing ALF is on hand for that.

Yeah, we don’t get much in the way of even superficial nods to 1980s youth culture, because the writers hit upon the idea of ALF wanting to spray her womb with Melmac shellac, and that was that. For the entirety of season one, that was her role. Lynn Tanner was an object that men could — conceivably — fill with semen. The most problematic approach to the character was the only one they attempted to see through. Lucky us.

Consider that ALF already has an unhealthy fascination with Willie and Kate’s sex life (hiding under the bed to listen to them fuck) and will eventually reveal that he watches the Ochmoneks hump as well, and you realize that the writers don’t even need Lynn in order to provide commentary on Earthling mating rituals…it’s just that they’re more interested in sex — interspecies, underage, degenerate puppet sex at that — than in developing her as a character.

And, well, so be it. Characterization wasn’t their strong point anyway. If they chose to focus on something they were terrible at, can I really get upset that they did it instead of focusing on something else that they were terrible at?

Periodically the writers did throw her a few token attempts at development. For instance, she got a few humorously “ditzy” lines throughout the season…which, when combined with her timeslot’s equivalent of a sex life, seemed to position her as what I called a family-friendly Kelly Bundy. (I’m blanking on what a lot of those lines were, but I do remember her “It wasn’t funny” being a highlight of “It Isn’t Easy…Bein’ Green.”)

But that’s reaching, as it really only holds true for a select few episodes. Overall, Lynn Tanner was nobody, and was nothing.

…except when she wasn’t. To me, there was one Lynn moment that really stood out in season one: in the show’s very first good episode, “For Your Eyes Only,” she arranges a date between ALF and Jodie, sowing the seeds for a great friendship between the alien and the teen in season two.

Lynn became his closest confidant, the one who believed in him most, and the one who would support him when nobody else would. That latter aspect nearly culminated in a great ending to season two as well.

Lynn taking him to see Jodie was such a small thing that I could understand it not even registering to many viewers. But, to me, it was the first time a human being acted like a human being on this damned show. I believed that Lynn felt sorry for him, and when that aspect of their relationship took center stage in season two, I continued to believe it.

Lynn was — and remained — a naturally caring individual. She’d come to ALF’s defense whenever he needed her, whenever he didn’t have another friend in the world. And it all built to — or should have built to — “Varsity Drag,” in which Lynn had to face the consequences of that unflinching support: ALF has bankrupted the family, and they can’t afford to send her away to college.

We were so, so close to getting some interesting character work out of season two, and I feel more than a little vindicated that my favorite thing about Lynn in season one — the blink-and-miss-it camaraderie from “For Your Eyes Only” — laid the groundwork for their relationship to come, but, ultimately, “Varisty Drag” bailed on the idea of their relationship being truly tested. Instead Willie and Kate delivered some newspapers and Lynn decided, eh, whatever, this show can’t decide if I’m even college age anyway, so what does it matter?

Despite the botched landing, though, season two developed the right kind of relationship between these two characters. ALF wasn’t trying to fuck her, and she wasn’t being a slutty idiot. No…what seemed to develop between them was something we humans call “friendship.” And while seriously testing the strength of that friendship would have been a great way to end the season — and establish a retroactive emotional arc between them — I find it hard to complain about the rest of it.

When everyone else was punishing him, she brought him lemonade (at night, confusingly) in “Somewhere Over the Rerun.” She came to his defense over the broken window in “Can I Get a Witness?” She tried to get him to overcome his guilt at accidentally murdering, desecrating, and eating the flesh of Willie’s uncle in “We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert.” And she encouraged his new hobby in “I’m Your Puppet.”

All of which was very convincing, mainly because Andrea Elson, unlike every last one of her costars, does not seem to be overpowered by hatred. The writers recognized that despite the grueling hours, despite the awful working conditions, despite the star of the show shouting “nigger nigger nigger” to entertain the crew between takes, Elson could still be believably nice. And sweet. And understanding.

And just as we know the writers weren’t that great at their jobs, we know Elson wasn’t that great at acting. No…what we saw throughout season two was a natural intersection between who Elson really was, and who the writers were smart enough to let her be. While I’m sure every one of her lines was scripted, I don’t think we’d have seen much of a difference if, in the scenes I’ve mentioned, the writers simply included a stage direction that said “Andrea cheers him up.”

Most satisfying to me, though, is the fact that their relationship wasn’t entirely one-way. Lynn didn’t live to serve ALF; he helped her, too…and you can count the times he’s helped others on one truly mangled hand. The most obvious example of this was surprise highlight “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which saw him shepherding her through a crisis of self-worth. It was a funny, sweet episode that went a long way toward convincing me that he cared about her at a depth greater than that of her vagina.

Of course, season two also introduced Jake, who seamlessly picked up right where ALF left off: trying to shove dicks in all of her holes.

Now, I like Jake…but I’m saying so as we close season three. When he was introduced in season two, he was a character with serious issues, and the fact that his secondary personality trait was that he wanted to cum in Lynn’s butt didn’t help the show stay in my good graces. (His primary trait was commenting on the spiciness of meatballs.)

The sexualization of Lynn is vaguely bothersome, and I can’t put my finger on it. (OOPS NOW I DID IT TOO.) I think, in this case, it’s because I have the real-world knowledge that Andrea Elson suffered from a particularly nasty eating disorder while working on this show, and I honestly wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that ALF so often treated her as a piece of meat…something for male characters to slobber over, make inappropriate comments about, and then toss along to the next one.

She was by no means the only actor to suffer for her time on ALF, but it does make me feel bad in a way that I don’t feel for the others. An underpants-clad Max Wright smoking crack in an abandoned warehouse will never not make me laugh…but Andrea Elson looking in the mirror and thinking she sees some fat, hideous monster staring back at her is just heartbreaking, and cosmically unfair.

So season two gave us the best possible relationship between Lynn and ALF…but it also retained the worst impulses and skeeviness of season one. The show giveth with one hand, and sexually assaulteth with the other.

Which brings us to season three…where we really complicate things. On the bright side, the show performed some course correction in terms of Jake’s lusting for Brian’s sister and Willie’s daughter (both of whom just sat there numbly while the kid joked about wanting to finger her savagely). Season three saw Lynn pushing him away — as evidenced notably in “Fight Back” — and the net result was that it now seemed more like cute flirtation than it did like unwelcome sexual advance. It didn’t take much…just a moment or two of assertiveness…to recontextualize the whole thing. And, in doing so, it freed Jake up to become a character who just happened to also be attracted to the neighbor girl. It was no longer one of his defining traits, and he got to move on to more interesting business as a result. It was a win all around.

But that was the only win. ALF’s friendship with her all but vanished, which is odd to me. It was such a natural, effortless part of season two, but, for whatever reason, she became just another family member again in season three. Maybe ALF, like so many shitheads and fratboys before him, realized he wasn’t going to get any and therefore it wasn’t worth paying attention to her.

Whatever the case, we lost out on seeing their relationship develop (or at least sustain) over the course of the year. The single richest relationship in the show just…stopped. They were roommates, and that’s all. And that’s disappointing.

Not nearly as disappointing, though, as the increased focus on Lynn’s sex life, which formed the centerpiece of three different episodes.

Prior to this, Lynn dated. That’s understandable. But while she’d like Scott in “Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue?” or bring Lizard to her parents’ Halloween party in “Some Enchanted Evening,” her romantic dabblings shifted into season three’s foreground…with often icky results.

This means that season three actually has the distinction of being the season that most developed Lynn as a character…but it developed her in the wrong direction.

“Stop in the Name of Love” is the first of the Lynnsertion Trilogy, and on its surface it’s just some dumbass episode about ALF being stuck in the back seat of a car during one of her dates. It’s a stupid, forgettable episode, which is fine. (God knows that’s not a complaint exclusive to “Stop in the Name of Love.”) But it does something bizarre along the way, introducing us to the idea that, between seasons, Lynn got engaged to her boyfriend Lloyd…then they made plans to marry in a planetarium…and then they broke up.

This is odd in every conceivable fucking way, not least because Lynn already had a recurring boyfriend in season two’s Lizard. (Though she went out with at least one other guy, Rick, during that time.) Now she was planning on marrying someone we never met and will never be referred to again. Which is strange…but not as strange as how quickly she rebounds from the fact that her fiance dumped her, and pounces immediately at some new guys: the Duckworth cousins. She wanted one, ALF hooked her up with another, but she ended up with the right one instead, so, like the whole planetarium wedding thing, it really wasn’t worth bringing up the complication to begin with.

Lynn bouncing among three men in the episode — so quickly and without more than a token nod at feeling sad about her broken engagement — diminishes her as a character, and makes us care less about her feelings. After all, if a woman can bounce back so quickly from losing her future husband, what can any of her romantic fumblings mean?

The three men thing carries on into “Promises, Promises,” without any of the three being the same. Neither of the Duckworths nor Lloyd have anything to do with Lynn’s indiscriminate fucking in “Promises, Promises.”

No, it’s Patchouli (though one commenter tells me it might actually have been Julie…I admit I still have no idea how to translate Wright Speak), Eddie, and Randy. The former (if it is a man) is evidently out of the picture by the time of the episode, and the latter is mainly a smokescreen to keep her dad off her back…because really what she wants is to be plowed by an inappropriately older man named Eddie.

It’s creepy, and off-putting. But not as creepy and off-putting as the fact that she keeps seeing him after she’s understandably forbidden to. ALF rats her out…and then the episode is about ALF apologizing for trying to keep her safe from the kind of oily bastard who cruises for teenage girls to fuck.

Within the reality of the show, of course, I know that Lynn isn’t being victimized. But outside of that reality…once you move beyond the boundaries of your TV screen…the episode is troubling.

Children are watching this. Young boys and girls. And they’re being shown many signs of a sexually manipulative relationship (much older partner, mandatory secrecy, lies and false arrangements) and seeing it framed as something trivial. ALF, for one rare (though unintentional) moment, does the right thing…and then he’s the one punished for it. Even Lynn’s mother doesn’t seem to care much. Oh, you’re still seeing that old guy that’s been touching you and telling you your parents must never find out? Kids will be kids!

It was disgusting, and while ALF has never been the most intelligent show, that was the first time I’d seen it be destructively stupid.

And then, finally, there was “Torn Between Two Lovers,” which saw Lynn’s love-life simplified by having only two men wanting to bone her. In fact, they were two men from previous episodes (Danny Duckworth and Randy), so I don’t have much to complain about there. But the outcome is a strange one. Throughout the episode it feels as though it’s building to Lynn’s realization that Danny isn’t very good to her (and he’s definitely not), but when it ends they’re still together. Randy is set up (as far as I can tell) as a better romantic choice for her, but she neither goes for him nor comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t need either dick inside her.

Of the three Fuckapaloozas, “Torn Between Two Lovers” is by far the least horrible (and it has a great moment of Lynn asserting herself toward the end), but it’s still disappointing, as it leads right up to — and deliberately falls short of — Lynn acting like a person and realizing that she doesn’t need this manipulative, controlling shit in her life.

Oh, and we can’t forget the hilarious “Turkey in the Straw,” which revealed that in spite of their hatred for their neighbors, the Tanners used to pair their naked children off with distant Ochmonek relatives for bathtime sexplay.

Happy Fappy, everyone!!

But you know what? Even as this show ran Lynn through the wringer — and introduced a hilarious recurring gag in which people THREW FOOD ALL OVER HER FUCKING FACE — she was still played by Andrea Elson. And because of that, the warmth never left her.

She was still there when ALF, or anyone, needed her. She was still prone to laughing at jokes her character probably wasn’t actually meant to laugh at. She still had a winning and sincere smile. She was still, in spite of everything, a happy and caring human being.

I know a few commenters have said that they had crushes on Lynn growing up. I don’t know if I can understand that completely, since Lynn is still just something on this show for ALF to bounce off of, but I can absolutely understand having a crush on Andrea Elson.

She’s a strong person. She has to be; everyone around her — Anne Schedeen included — has given up on this show. They’ve stopped trying. They’ve stopped pretending that they’re happy, smiling in promotional photographs, and saying nice things about it in interviews. They’ve given up. They spend every moment at work wishing they could go home, and every moment at home wishing they didn’t have to go to work.

But Elson?

She’s keeping it together. She’s fighting her own demons in her own way…but when the camera is rolling, she puts it all aside. She accentuates the positive. She can see the bright side, even on the set of cocksuckin’ ALF.

She may never have become much of an actor, but she was always a professional. She was a warmer and more genuine presence than this show deserved. She didn’t get many jokes — and didn’t often avoid stepping on the few she did get — but she was something others on this show so rarely are: convincing.

She acted like a sister to Brian. She acted like a daughter to Willie. She acted like a friend to ALF. She was something this show needed much more of: someone who is who we’re told she is.

I watch ALF now, and I find myself disarmed often by Elson. She gets harder and harder to make fun of as the episodes go by, because I appreciate the small breath of humanity that she represents. When she’s on screen I’m not trying to think of jokes to make…I’m looking for her to break into a fit of unexpected chuckles, or to smile in a way that’s too convincing to be false. I turn to her for the assurance that, yes, it is possible to make it through the entire run of ALF, and come out the other end feeling okay.

Lynn Tanner isn’t much of a character. But Andrea Elson sure is. And if we got to see behind the camera more often, I bet she’d even be the hero.

There’s one more season to go. And I admit I have no idea what they’re going to do with Lynn next.

But, whatever it is, we can make it through.

Right, Andrea?

And so we close out another season…with only one left to go. That’s about all that needs to be said, but just try ‘n’ shut me up.

Season three was a really odd beast. I mentioned that the season seemed to be dragging, which, in a way, makes sense: it’s the longest of ALF‘s four seasons. But it’s only longer by one episode…so the fatigue certainly shouldn’t have set in as early or as easily as it did.

I have a theory for why it felt longer than it really was: season three plays like two half-seasons jammed together.

It wasn’t really, of course…but it sure feels that way.

The first half of the season stands separate in just about every way from the second, right down to the cast. Unless I’m forgetting something, Jake only appeared in “Turkey in the Straw” in the first half…but played major roles throughout the second. It was apparently a scheduling issue rather than a creative decision, but Jake’s appearing/disappearing act is the clearest discrepancy between the two.

It’s not, however, the most important.

The most important was, simply, the quality of the writing.

See, the first half was pretty damned lousy. I was warned before starting this series that the show peaked with season two. Everything after that was, I was told politely, an unmitigated disaster of global proportions.

And when season three began, I certainly wasn’t doubting that. In fact, the first six episodes seemed designed especially to make me give up on this project. “Stop in the Name of Love,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” “Tonight, Tonight,” “Tonight, Tonight 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold,” and “Promises, Promises” were all fifty shades of dickshit. The latter episode, in fact, marked the first time I sat at my computer unable to bring myself to even write about it. It was bad.

And things didn’t get much better from there. “Turkey in the Straw” had its moments — owing mainly to a solid guest turn by David Ogden Stiers — but was still a pretty massive pile of crap. And right after that we got “Changes,” “My Back Pages,” and “Do You Believe in Magic?,” that last having the dubious distinction of being the episode that actually made my childhood self throw up his hands and say, for the first time, “Fuck this show.”

The lone highlight of the first half was “Alone Again, Naturally,” which took an interesting idea (ALF finding out about a potential other survivor of the Melmapocalypse), handled it decently well, and gave us a daringly sad ending. It wasn’t a classic episode of television by any means, but for ALF it was good, and for ALF season three it was great.

But things picked up for the second half of the season…and they picked up considerably. In that back half we had “Fight Back,” “Superstition,” “Funeral For a Friend,” and “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow,” all of which are going to jostle for space on my list of favorites. Compared to the single, flawed highlight of the first half of the season, this is a marked improvement.

What’s more, even the bad episodes had good ideas. Okay…maybe not all of them…but though I came away from many of them feeling disappointed, I at least agreed that they had ideas or stories worth exploring.

“Running Scared” was about somebody blackmailing ALF to keep his alien origins a secret…and the reveal that the blackmailer meant a different kind of alien was a perfect way to resolve the story without breaking the status quo.

“Torn Between Two Lovers” was pretty lousy, but it ended with a strikingly astute observation about gender roles in relationships, and gave Lynn a chance to assert herself as a human being in a show that so often treats her like she’s not one.

Then there was “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” which deserves at least a little credit for attempting to resuscitate Brian, and “Shake, Rattle and Roll” which opened a nice conversation about mortality…even if it didn’t quite know what to do after raising the issue.

That, I have to admit, is a solid back half.

And as I mentioned before, Jake’s frequent presence helped it a great deal. Josh Blake did some excellent work considering what he was given (and the ultimately disposable nature of his role), and there was always a sense of promise when he appeared at the Tanners’ door; we knew that somebody in the scene to come would actually give a shit about what they were doing.

So far, so good, but with both halves feeling so different, it honestly felt like I reviewed two seasons back to back without a break.

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that the back half didn’t have its genuine stinkers. “Suspicious Minds” was basically a half hour of ALF reading Elvis’ Wikipedia page, “Standing in the Shadows of Love” had our alien hero lusting after an underage Carla Gugino, and “Like an Old Time Movie” was a loveless homage to what the writers shrugged and assumed silent films were like.

…but you know what? I liked them.

Not really. Like is a pretty strong word. But there was something enjoyable about them in a way that so many of this show’s other bad episodes never achieved. There’s a kind of awe I find myself experiencing when an episode is not just bad, but is so deeply, thoroughly misguided…and I end up loving the fact that it exists. No, I’ll never watch ALF hanging out with Elvis again as long as I live, but every so often I’ll remember that some dumbass television crew devoted a week of their lives to making it, and I’ll laugh. It, along with many of season three’s other crap baskets, is stupid to the point of achievement. And I’ll take that any day.

Honestly, season three might be my favorite season yet, from a reviewing standpoint. Which is why I find it odd that the inevitable “Why don’t you stop watching?” conversation came smack in the middle of it. This was seriously the perfect mix for me…it had the periodic high quality of season two, combined with the batshit insanity of season one. It was the best of both worlds, as far as I am concerned. It had episodes I could enjoy and speak at intelligent length about, and it had episodes I could barely see because my head wouldn’t stop shaking. And that’s wonderful.

In fact, this might be the season I’d recommend to somebody who wanted to know what ALF was like. It’d do a good job of showcasing both why people enjoyed it, and why it’s almost entirely neglected today. It’s all of the show’s best and worst impulses in one stretch of episodes. It’s the way ALF should be remembered, and also the reason ALF should be forgotten.

As much as I pick on the crappy episodes of this show, I do enjoy it when the writers take risks, and when they explore unexpected territory. Neither approach pays off for them very often, but there’s something fascinating and instructive about this show’s failures. And, flatly, that’s what I’d call season three: fascinating and instructive. It’s a backhanded compliment, but that’s more than I can usually give this show.

One thing that struck me as very odd was the disappearance of previously important characters. Jodi and Dr. Dykstra, for instance, were two favorites of mine, so their absences were easily felt. Granted, I think they’ve only been in about three episodes each, but for the entire season to go without so much as mentioning them…it’s worrying.

ALF introduces characters frequently, and they’re nearly all fucking terrible, so when the show creates not just one but two that I enjoyed spending time with, it feels like a slap in the face when they disappear entirely. Couple their absence with the untimely death of Jake and I’m really starting to dread season four.

Odder, though, is the lack of Kate Sr. She was a very important part of season one and a fairly important part of season two, but she didn’t appear at all in season three. She’s not one of my favorite characters, so this isn’t really a complaint, but it’s kind of odd that the only recurring member of the extended family simply ceased to exist and wasn’t mentioned once. I can’t quite articulate why, but her absence strikes me as bizarre.

But, yeah, that’s about it for season three.

We’re entering the home stretch now, with everything that happens in season four being the last time it ever happens. I’m excited by that, and a bit sad. As much as I’ll be glad to stop thinking about / writing about / dreaming about ALF, it’ll be a bit sad to lose the little community that built up around these reviews, made better points than I did, and yelled at me about abortion.

…we’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. Two more bonus features, and then we’re on to the final batch of episodes. And then there’s — shiver — Project: Fuckin’ ALF.

The Tanners have a new baby, the best actress no longer gives a shit, and the only good characters don’t appear anymore.

I’m positive the show will be better than ever!

Grab a snack, settle in, and let’s give this show the farewell it deserves.

Roll on, season four.